• A 44-year-old Cape Town mother started selling chips, fruit, vetkoek and biscuits outside a clinic after child support grants for two of her children stopped.
• She now wakes up early daily to sell outside the clinic, earning between R150 and more than R300 a day to buy food and electricity.
A 44-year-old mother of four in Cape Town is fighting to keep her family fed by selling snacks outside a local clinic.
The woman started a small street business after most of the child support grants she relied on stopped.
She said she used to receive grants for three of her children. Now she only receives one.
The money was no longer enough to support the family.
“I was earning grant money for my three kids but I am now only getting a child support grant for only one kid,” she said.
She said the grants for her other two children stopped and she has tried to reapply but has had no success.
“So I decided to do something because the grant for one child was no longer enough to buy food,” she said.
Before she started selling food outside the clinic, things were very hard at home.
There were days when the family went to bed with empty stomachs.
The mother now sells chips, fruit, vetkoek and biscuits every day.
She wakes up early each morning to prepare and set up her small stall outside the clinic.
She said working outside is not easy because she has to face the weather every day.
“The challenges in doing this job is weather. I have to be there everyday even if it’s cold or hot,” she said.
She said she cannot afford to stay home because the money she earns helps her buy food and electricity.
On good days she makes more than R300.
On bad days she makes about R150 and sometimes struggles to make even R100.
“Just like any other business things are not always good and I have accepted that,” she said.
She also worries about crime.
She said two men once approached her and asked questions about how much money she was making.
She suspects they could have been extortionists.
“They didn’t introduce themselves as extortionists but I suspect it is them,” she said.
She told them she was only trying to make enough money to buy food for her children.
The men never returned.
Despite the challenges, she said she is thankful for the people who buy from her.
“I am grateful to everyone who is supporting me, they are the reason that we don’t go to bed hungry,” she said.
Pictured above: Fatcakes
Image source: Supplied
